The King (Black Dagger Brotherhood #12) - J.R. Ward Page 0,14

however pretty and young that daughter was, she was but a far-off echo of loveliness compared to his unattainable Chosen.

“You must stop this,” he said into the cold night breeze. “Stop this the now.”

A fine command, indeed—and yet it was several minutes before he could calm himself enough to focus and dematerialize from the front lawn.

A blink later and Xcor was finally in his element: The alley before him was an urban armpit, the snow filthy from the tire grab left over after countless dump and delivery trucks had passed o’er this stretch behind half a dozen cheap restaurants. In spite of frigid December gusts, the stench of spoiled meat and denaturing green matter was enough to make the inside of the nose tingle.

Breathing in, he searched for the sickly sweetness of the enemy.

He had been born deformed and cast away unto the world by the female who had brought him forth from her womb. Reared in the Bloodletter’s war camp, he had been honed as a blade in that sadist’s fire pit of aggression and pain, any weakness pounded out of him until he was as deadly as a dagger.

This theater of combat was where he belonged.

And he was not alone for long.

Wrenching his head around, he braced his weight into his thighs. A group of human men came into view, clearing the corner, walking in a pack. When they saw him, they stopped and drew in on themselves.

Xcor rolled his eyes and resumed his promenade in the opposite direction—

“Whadafuckyadoin’,” came the shout-out.

Turning back, he eyed the five of them. They were wearing some sort of coordinated theme of tough human: leather jackets, black skull caps, bandannas tied to the bottoms of their faces.

They had clearly intended to come upon someone or someones else.

Not the kind of foe he bothered with. For one thing, humans were so inferior physically, it was like biting into that apple. Secondly, they were liable to involve others of their species, either on purpose through that dreaded 911 thing or inadvertently, by causing a noise that alerted passersby.

“Whadafuckyadoin’!”

If he stayed silent, mayhap this would escalate into a coordinated song-and-dance number? How frightening.

“Go about your night,” he said in a low voice.

“Go about your—whatreyasomekindaforiegnfuck?”

Or something to that effect. Their accents were difficult to decipher—moreover, he was disinterested in making much effort on that front—

From out of nowhere, a car careened around that corner, its tires losing traction as its driver pounded on the brakes.

Gunshots rang out, echoing through the night, scattering the assembled, including himself.

Wrong place, wrong time, Xcor thought as he caught a slug in the shoulder, the pain blazing through his head—and making it impossible for him to dematerialize.

He wanted nothing of this silly fight amongst the rats without tails. But it appeared as if he were going to have to engage.

He was not dying as the result of a human’s bullet.

THREE

I-87, A.K.A. THE NORTHWAY

Oh, that new-car smell.

A combination of too-fresh carpeting, still-viscous hinge oil, and glue that was only surface dry.

Sola Morte loved a fresh start in the automotive department, which was why she always leased her Audi A4s. Every three years she got a new one—sometimes more often if there was a program that let her jump ship a month or two early.

So, yeah, this was familiar territory … except for the fact that she was getting a whiff of heaven from the trunk of whatever sedan she had been shut into.

Not the way she’d planned on ending her night, but sometimes free will was out on break when you needed it.

The question now was, how to survive the kidnapping and get back home.

Given her line of work as a burglar, she was used to improvising in dangerous situations. She wasn’t exactly MacGyver-capable; it wasn’t like she could build a nine-millimeter autoloader out of duct tape, a tube of toothpaste, twelve cents, and a Bic lighter. But she was smart enough to feel around, looking for a tire iron, a tool kit … a forgotten soda can. Anything she could use as a weapon.

When she’d been abducted from her house, she’d had nothing but the parka on her back and a desperate hope that whoever it was got her out before her grandmother made it down the stairs and was dragged into all this. The latter happened. The former? Bad news, because she didn’t even have a cell phone.

And so far, her palm expeditions around the trunk had yielded a big fat nada.

She also had no clue where she was being